Senator Young (Sociology) requested a correction to his
comment regarding Faculty Development Leave to read: The problem in getting
faculty to apply for faculty development leave is that the perception that the
structure of the evaluation process is such that those projects donít get
funded because they are not appreciated by the evaluator thatís assessing the
evaluation.

Senator Kinsel (Chemistry) requested that under the
Committee business, the Kinsel committee name be changed to Ethics.

All members were in favor of previous minutes with the above
corrections.

Remarks by the Chair:

Chair Chrzanowski attended the Board of Regents
meeting.† There were four
presentations:† Lisa Ann Wuermzer of
UT-Southwestern discussed technology transfer focusing on the cost of benefit
ratio and how much of the technology income should be redirected back to the
faculty member who developed the technology.†

Jim Bartlett of UT-Dallas discussed the Faculty Satisfaction
Survey.† The regents were interested in
the outcomes of the survey.

Senator Reinhartz also attended the Board of Regents meeting
where he discussed the importance of Faculty Development Leave and its
importance to the UT System.† This
benefit is not used and he urged the regents to encourage the faculty.

Robert Nelson of the UT Faculty Senate made a presentation
and offered to make a resolution on the establishment of executive
councils.† The resolution requests the
regents to establish a policy where faculty members have representation at the
upper administration levels for a voice when policies are implemented.

The presentations were well received by regents.

The chancellor commented on the changing culture in
academics.† In the future, there will be
more tolerance for entrepreneurship.†
There must be balance of entrepreneurship and academics.

Regent Oxford emphasized the need for research and for
future money and grants.† The UT System
must make the effort to attract venture capital.† The future of academics is moving towards venture capital and the
marketability for the products invented via academic entrepreneurship.

Senator Reinhartz added that the UT System was the most
generous nationwide in technology transfer with 50% going back to the
inventor.† The national average is
42%.† The UT System is trying to lower
their transfer percentage to the national average with the possibility of the
balance of funds being diverted back to the inventorís lab for research.

Chair Chrzanowski updated the senate on the Criminal
Background Check Policy.† A revised
document has been established and was forwarded to all units earlier this
week.† UTA will create their own policy
based on these guidelines.

Chair Chrzanowski also discussed the Tenure and Promotion
issue raised at the last Executive Board Meeting.†† Tenure and promotion policies are not being following rigorously
in some departments.† Faculty members
are not receiving timely and thorough reviews.†
The issue was brought to the President.†
The President then brought the issue to the Provost who sent a memo to
deans insisting they follow the established evaluation rules.† Chair Chrzanowski then thanked Drs. Witt and
Wright for their attention to the matter.

Dr. Witt said that Dr. Wright found that the policy and
procedures were being followed in spirit and not letter.† In the future, a list will be provided to
the deans describing items that should take place in reviews and the required
sign-off of the person being evaluated.

Senator Young (Sociology) asked for examples of the things
not being done in the evaluations.

Chair Chrzanowski said that some annual reviews were not
being conducted at all.† Furthermore,
faculty members under review were not informed of the outcome. There have also
been cases of faculty not being given access to teaching evaluations.†

Dr. Witt added that the Provost investigated the issues and
concluded that the most common reason policy and procedure were not followed
was because the evaluator did not want to relay negative information.† Consequently, training will be developed on
how to give performance reviews.

Chair Chrzanowski discussed the Revised Mission Statement.† The Mission Statement was revised with some
faculty input and was sent to him 3 weeks ago.†
The new Mission Statement is required by SACs and is now available.† Senator Reinhartz added that Dana Dunn
informed him that when the Mission Statement is approved, it can be revised
again.† The Faculty Administration
Committee will redo in the future.

Chair Chrzanowski discussed the organizational changes in
the Faculty Senate.† The senate has been
operating under bylaws that were established in the late 1960s.† The founding document is close to 40 years
old.† Chair Chrzanowski has been
instituting changes to the bylaws as to how the Faculty Senate operates to
bring it in line with its current operation.†
UTAís Faculty Senate doesnít operate like other units of the UT
System.† For example, the committee
structure for instituting minor actions of the senate need to be revised.† Chair Chrzanowski has also asked the
Presidentís Advisory Group to meet 1Ĺ hour prior to meeting with the president
to set the agenda for meetings.† In the
past, chairs have set the agenda.† In
the groupís last meeting, Chair Chrzanowski asked all chairs to join the group
to integrate the decision-making.

Presidentís
Remarks

Dr. Witt discussed UT Systemís emphasis on entrepreneurship
and technology transfer for the future of academics.† He could not fully describe the implications, but felt that UTA
was further down the road than other units.†
One important issue is the reduction of royalties to the inventor.† Even if the UT System does decide to reduce
royalties, a significant portion will be allocated back to the
institution.† He also anticipated UT
keeping the current plan of 95% going to the professor and 5% being allocated
to the institution.† One problem with
entrepreneurship is the importance of having your ideas patented before
publishing about the technology discovered.†
In a recent case, a manuscript could be not be published because the
idea discussed in the article was not yet patented.† Another problem with technology transfer and entrepreneurship is
the requirement of having to publish and research and how that applies to
tenure.† The Faculty Senate should
address these issues.

†

Questions to the
President

Senator Eakin:††††††††††††††††††††††† Any updates on the
Dallas Citizenís Council (DCC)?

President Witt:††††† The DCC is
going forward with its project of collaboration between Metroplex
universities.† UTA should be positive
and see what comes of it, but there are many challenges to overcome.† The Georgia State System recently adopted
the model.† The State of Georgia has
gone from $300M to $900M in research funds from the federal government
(NIH).† The advantage to this
collaboration for UTA would be funding.†
The NSF has a budget of $4.5 Billion compared to NIHís budget of $28
Billion.† The DCC will continue to push
very hard for the collaboration.

Senator Reinhartz:†††††††† ††††††††††††††††††††††† Will
the Faculty Senate have input on the latest security document?

President
Witt:† ††††††††††† Yes.† A draft response will be prepared for the
Chair of the Faculty Senate for review.†
UT-Austin will be the first, so weíll let them lead us.

Senator
Amster:††††††††††† In California, faculty
members are required to sign a Patent Agreement upon being hired even before
there is a product developed.† Can you
check to see how useful that would be for us here?

President
Witt:††††††††††† In the spring, we will
review the current operating procedure and check with sister institutions to
see if their procedures would be useful here.

Senator
Liu:††††††††††† How will we recognize our
own company work and UTA research work?†
How will the benefits for the company and scientific research work for
UTA be separated?† It would be
beneficial to have a committee to give ideas on how to identify these
identities.

President
Witt:††††††††††† This is a very complex
situation.† It would be best served as
university policy and procedure.† Also,
it would be best if it came from the Faculty Senate rather than central
administration.† The Faculty Senate
could develop guidelines that make sense.†
The challenge will be implementing the policy.† An example of this dilemma would be the Faculty Development Leave
selection.†

Chair
Chrzanowski:††††††††††† The Faculty
Development Leave issue was discussed at the last Executive Board meeting.† Dr. Witt is right in that the issue is not
the policy but in educating ourselves.†

President Witt:††††††††††††† $4.2 Million has been awarded to
UTA from NSF for nanotechnology.† UTA
was awarded $2.4M from the Defense Bill which will be allocated to the Nanotech
Center mainly to upgrade equipment.†
Also, $400K will be used for a Nanoscience Center in the new Science
Building.† This year there are no
restrictions on earmarks.† Currently,
there are 10-15 federal earmark requests.

Senator Liu:† ††† ††††††††††† How
long will the money last?

President Witt:† ††††††††††† The money is a one-time grant for
equipment, staff, etc.

Senator Amster:††††††††††† It is my understanding that you
invited us to formulate a proposal to handle the change in emphasis.† Should it b done as a group?

President Witt:††††††††††††† Debate should take place within
this group so that when asked for suggestions on policy and procedures, it will
already have been discussed.

Chair Chrzanowski:††††††††††† This
issue will be discussed at the next UT Faculty Meeting.

Senator Estes:†††††††††††††† A friend of mine at Stanford who
had tenure was in the same situation as weíre discussing.† He resigned and started his own company.† This could happen here.† UT has the potential of losing tenured
faculty.

President
Witt:† ††††††††††† We
want to keep our faculty and need to find way to make it beneficial for faculty
to stay.

(President Witt left the meeting.)

Committees:

Council of Faculty
Senates:† Nothing to report.

Equity:† Nothing to report.

Academic Tenure
& Freedom:†

Senator Crowder reported that the committee is working on
tenure promotion policies.† Senator
Maizlish who is head of receivership discussed President Wittís objections to
the introductory paragraph, which he feels is too broad regarding faculty
rights.† The committee will meet
afterwards and resolve, then present changes to the Senate.†

Chair Chrzanowski:†
The Receivership Document was brought from the UT Faculty Senate as a
blanket document with the idea to establish a line of communication.† Can send to UT System before the end of the
year.

Senator Maizlich:†
the President objected to the general paragraph.

Operating
Procedures:† Started discussion
regarding issues related to reviews of Academic Administration.† Sent list of questions relating to current
review policy.† Need a more specific
list of which directors are included for review.† The policy doesnít address reviews for Asst. or Assoc. VPs.† The committee has requested positions and
descriptions.† Title changes are also
easily handled and will be discussed at the next meeting.† Some reviews have stopped and others are not
being conducted at all.

Senator Young:† Who
is responsible for initiating review procedure?

Chair Chrzanowski:†
Michael Moore, but he wonít review while the policy is being revised.

Chair Chrzanowski will write a memo to Michael Moore
regarding the policy and its effectiveness.

Senator Estes:††††† Deans are to
be reviewed every 5 years.† When are we
going to review deans?

Senator Reinhartz:††††† Deans may
currently be reviewed, but may not be announced.† Not sure.

Chair
Chrzanowski:††††††††††† Your committee is
to assess increasing administration vs. increase in faculty salaries to
determine if salary compression is occurring at UTA.

Budget Liasion:† Nothing to report.

Academic Liasion:† The Committee met with Student Services
Liasion Committee to complete the Faculty Guide.† The guide will be posted on-line hopefully next semester, then
will hand over to Michael Mooreís office.

Student Services:† Nothing to report.

Ethics:† Met on Monday and discussed the issue of
compensation for faculty who supervise summer graduate/dissertation
students.† Compensation for faculty in
the summer is only done by Engineering.†
They have a mechanism in place to compensate their faculty.† When discussing with chairs and deans, their
reason for not instituting a new policy on summer pay is that they didnít know
it was done in other parts of the university.†
The Faculty Senate should put forth a resolution so the faculty can be
compensated.

Chair Chrzanowski :† Can you draft a resolution?

Senator Kinsel:†
Maybe.† I have information on how
engineering distributes money.† This is
a touchy issue.† Need to know how much
is brought in and spent on graduate students.†
Iím open to suggestions.

Chair Chrzanowski will meet with the Provost on this issue.

Special Projects:† One nomination for Professor Emeritus.

Old Business:††††††††††† None.

New Business:†††††††

Dr. Kribs-Zaleta:††††††††††††††††††††††† Dr. Bernstein makes a
suggestion of changing the UT-Flex because it is not economical.† The Attorney Generalís office uses a debit
card for flex accounts.† That way when
expenses are incurred, they are debited directly out of the flex account.† The cost is not incurred twice by the
employee.

Senator Chrzanowski will call and get a speaker on the issue
for the next meeting.

Senator Chrzanowski requested the 3 hottest items on
campus.† They are:† Salary and Workload Inequities, Evaluation
of Administration, and Receivership.

Senator Reinhartz will ask other representatives to see if
these issue are present elsewhere in the system.

Senator Amster suggested changing the cycles of committee
memberships.† Once major issues are
started on committees, some representatives leave the senate.† Consequently, the process of researching
issues has to be started all over again.